It has always been open to our readers to submit comments on previously published articles, but when restricted to print such material could not appear until the following issue, and more than one comment was rare. In fact, the practice of serious debate engendered by letters to the editor has all but disappeared in most journals, for a variety of reasons.
With these thoughts in mind, I am delighted to announce the introduction of the new BIES Interactive Forum at <http://www.BIES-forum.com/>. This online Forum allows readers to submit comments on any article published in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies since 2004. Other readers–and the original authors–are then encouraged to make additional contributions to the debate. With this innovation in academic journal publishing we hope to involve you–our readers and authors–more actively in the dissemination and discussion of the fruits of academic research on the Indonesian economy.
Not only will you be able to read papers that report such research, but you will be able to add to it, constructively criticise it, propose alternative perspectives, and so on. The Forum will then become a truly interactive debate, bringing together authors, readers and other experts in the field in a way not previously possible.
Comments can be submitted on any article immediately it appears, and will be published as soon as they have been approved by the forum moderator. Moreover, readers and authors can be quickly alerted to every new comment through the site's automatic RSS feed mechanism. There is no limit to the number of comments that can be published.
The Forum will be moderated by me as editor of BIES, with the assistance of members of our editorial and international advisory boards. The objective of moderation will be to maintain appropriately high standards of academic discourse. Comments may have a different tone from published, refereed articles, and allow for more spontaneous response, but they must move the debate forward in a positive way and be readily comprehensible to a non-specialist audience. All comments posted will be archived and permanently citable.
On behalf of my colleagues in the Indonesia Project at the Australian National University, and our publisher, Routledge, of the Taylor & Francis Group, I warmly invite you to participate in the BIES Interactive Forum. We hope that this will stimulate the re-emergence of collaborative dialogue to the benefit of the whole journal community–authors and readers alike.
Ross H. McLeod